Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Worldwide, 36 billion cameras are watching us.

On our streets, at work, and in our homes,

they capture things that seem impossible.

Science says this shouldn't happen.

MAN: Do you see that?

NARRATOR: Experts carry out forensic analysis

of these unusual events.

Wow, what a blast!

[woman screaming]

-This doesn't make sense. -[screaming]

There has to be some sort of explanation.

What else is going on here?

NARRATOR: Coming up, a truck takes

home delivery to the next level.

A 40-ton truck doesn't just flip over like that.

NARRATOR: Are physical objects starting to defy gravity?

What? Yes!

NARRATOR: In China, is a chicken farmer

about to cook up a Jurassic breakfast?

We do know that chickens are quite closely related to

the Tyrannosaurus Rexes -- they share a lot of DNA.

[dinosaur roars]

NARRATOR: And a river of fire chases men,

women, and animals through a city street.

You see one of these coming your way,

you better run -- run for your life.

NARRATOR: Bizarre phenomena...

Oh, my gosh. [gasps]

...mysteries caught on camera.

[screaming]

NARRATOR: What's the truth behind this strange evidence?

Now, Lima, Peru.

January 23rd, 2020.

A CCTV camera captures panic on the streets.

We've got an obvious street view from what looks

like a security camera, and people are running past.

Oh, they're running like they are scared.

HOUSEHOLDER: This kind of looks like a scene out of

a Hollywood disaster movie.

WALLACE: Got this one kid that's fell, he pulls

his mother down, and there's even animals,

dogs running here.

What are they running away from?

They're clearly trying to escape something bad.

NARRATOR: Suddenly, fire races through the street.

-Oh! -The street is burning!

NARRATOR: There is no visible source of fuel on the road,

and yet it burns.

It's not like a normal flame.

It's like a wave.

It's like a tsunami of flames just crashing down the street.

NARRATOR: The source, a mystery.

WALLACE: Here, we see these flames coming down the street.

But what is off camera that we do not see

that is terrifying these people?

Everyone is clearly in danger.

NARRATOR: These people had good reason to run.

30 lives were lost in this incident,

and author Jeff Belanger wonders if

the cause could be the dangerous love affair

Peruvians have with homemade pyrotechnics.

Through December and January,

the Lima night sky is just lit up with fireworks.

[fireworks exploding]

NARRATOR: The festive period in Peru begins with Nochebuena

on Christmas Eve and reaches a finale in the New Year.

BELANGER: New Year's in Lima is a spectacular event,

and fireworks are a big part of it.

[loud fireworks explosions]

NARRATOR: But fireworks are as deadly as they are beautiful.

[loud fireworks explosions]

In America in 2017,

13,000 people are hospitalized with injuries caused

by these colorful pyrotechnics.

And in Peru, where safety runs

second to the nation's fondness for fireworks,

the toll has been even heavier.

In 2001, we had an incident in Peru where we had a massive

event where all these fireworks started going off.

[people screaming distantly]

WISE: Firefighters were able to pick through the wreckage.

They found the bodies of more than 235

men, women, and children.

NARRATOR: This disaster was one of the deadliest fires in

Lima's history.

More than 1,000 tons of fireworks exploded,

causing a firestorm that burned four blocks to

the ground in the center of this crowded city.

One survivor recalled rockets whizzing across the street

and catching fire to a complex,

trapping many people inside.

NARRATOR: Many blamed the incident on Peru's lax

pyrotechnic laws,

which allowed fireworks to be sold

on street corners across the capital.

WALLACE: As crazy as it may seem,

this whole fiasco started when we had a firework

owner demonstrating a firework, and it ignited

the other materials. -One stray spark,

one careless shopkeeper, is enough

to cause a catastrophic explosion.

[siren wailing]

NARRATOR: Peru now has some of

the strictest fireworks regulations in Latin America.

But these restrictions have created a thriving

black market.

There's an enormous problem in

Peru with illegal fireworks manufacturing.

These unregulated fireworks are dangerous for the people

who make them and the people who use them.

In November 2016,

Peruvian authorities seize 21 tons of illegal fireworks

in Lima and then detonate them outside the city.

[explosion blasts]

So is it possible that it was

an illegal firework that was behind this?

[crowd commotion]

NARRATOR: Hollywood pyrotechnics expert Matt Kutcher has over

20 years experience of blasts like these.

He doubts this tsunami of fire

was a weird type of firework exploding.

Look at that -- it's like a wave of fire.

So what everybody's running from

has already exploded or caught fire.

You know what that reminds me of, right?

When an LPG tank ruptures.

NARRATOR: LPG stands for liquefied petroleum gas.

It's a low-cost fuel,

usually either propane or butane, used

for auto fuel in specially adapted vehicles.

It's heavier than air,

so if it spills, it flows along the ground.

Could a low-lying flammable gas be ignited

and create a wave of fire down the street?

-I think it's possible. -I think it's possible.

Let's set up an experiment to see if we can make this happen.

NARRATOR: A concrete floored vehicle bay plays the part

of the Lima street surface for this experiment.

All right, gentlemen.

So I think in this space here,

we could try to create that low-lying fog of LPG,

right? So, if we could bring in a source of propane

and kind of stuff it into this cavity,

it allows it to sink and hit the ground.

The walls will kind of capture it the way the street did,

the way the curbs did, and it should roll out here,

and then we'll ignite it when we can't see it

and see if we can't get that

wave to chase us right out of here,

the same thing we saw in that video.

NARRATOR: An electrical ignition system

will provide a spark to light the flame,

but parts of the experiment are hard to control.

The gas itself is invisible.

Hopefully, because we actually can't see

how much propane we're putting in there,

it's not too much -- let's release

the propane and make some waves.

NARRATOR: The gas, when released from the pressurized

container, mixes with air to become highly volatile.

-A little hot. -It's hot.

Hey, we got to go -- in 3, 2, 1, hit it!

NARRATOR: Coming up, can Kutcher catch

a wave of fire? -Three, two, one, trigger.

Wham! It goes off.

NARRATOR: And the egg that will eat you for breakfast.

HYDE: This demonic hybrid turned out to be incredibly

aggressive and killed the other eight in the brood.

NARRATOR: Cameras capture men,

women, and animals fleeing from a wave of fire that appears to

chase them down the street.

Pyrotechnics expert Matt Kutcher wants to know if

a spill of liquefied petroleum gas could create

this fire tsunami.

Let's release the propane and make some waves.

3, 2, 1 -- hit it.

Wow! It goes off.

I think we made a wave of fire.

NARRATOR: Slowed down frame by frame,

the wave of fire can clearly

be seen racing away from the explosion.

A wave of fire just coming right towards us,

right on the ground.

NARRATOR: The resemblance to the fire burning

on the Lima street is striking.

KUTCHER: You know, with just one spark,

you get a terrifying wave of fire from that LPG.

It's just stuck on the ground, and wham! It goes off.

NARRATOR: This experiment demonstrates the lethal

potential of a fuel that many of us have in our homes.

Each year, gas leaks cause an average of 4,200 fires

in U.S. homes, killing about 40 Americans.

[loud explosion]

If you see one of these waves of fire coming your way,

you better run -- for your life.

NARRATOR: Police reports show a traffic accident

just moments before the blaze moved down the street.

A fuel tanker carrying almost 3,000 gallons of liquefied gas

came speeding down a freeway off ramp and hit a pothole.

The impact severed a fuel line, causing a massive leak.

NARRATOR: The people captured on camera got away,

but others had no warning the flames were coming.

WALLACE: There was 30 people that were killed

in this tragedy, and the majority of them were

due to the severe burns they sustained.

This disaster was the result of

poor safety practices and crumbling infrastructure.

And for the people who were caught in the middle, bad luck.

Now, Shenyang City, China.

October 8th, 2017.

On a Chinese chicken farm, an unusual egg.

-Oh! -What is even happening here?

This egg is unlike any chicken egg I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: The shell dips at the top,

allowing some weird protrusion to poke out.

GROWICK: This egg has a strange end to it,

something that almost looks like a tail.

It's actually quite menacing.

GROWICK: What could have caused a chicken to lay an egg

this shape?

There must be something strange going on here.

NARRATOR: Biologist Carin Bondar recognizes a familiar texture

to this weird appendage.

The protrusion appears to be scaly,

almost reptilian in a way.

Chickens we know are

actually very closely related to reptiles.

NARRATOR: Chickens, like all modern birds,

are part of a reptile subclass known as archosaurs

that dates back nearly 250 million years.

[rooster crowing]

Chickens are actually relatively

closely related to alligators and crocodiles.

And in fact, alligators and crocodiles are more closely

related to birds than they are to many other reptiles.

NARRATOR: Potvin believes that some sort of

biological throwback could have caused a reptilian

appendage to emerge from the egg.

We get something called atavism,

which is where genes will actually almost regress to

a former state.

So could this be what we're seeing here?

GROWICK: Recently, scientists have been experimenting

with chicken DNA in an attempt to re-express old genes.

This has actually allowed them to grow

specific chickens that have teeth in their beaks.

NARRATOR: In 2006, a biologist in Wisconsin created a chicken

embryo with an alligator's snout and teeth,

and gators aren't the chicken's

only unexpected razor-toothed relative.

And we do know that chickens are quite closely related to

the Tyrannosaurus Rexes -- they share a lot of DNA.

NARRATOR: The biggest modern rooster,

the Jersey Giant, is just over two feet tall and weighs in at

15 pounds, while T-rex may have grown

to 40 feet long and weighed up to 10 tons,

but biologists recognize the similarity between

the two creatures' basic body shapes.

[dinosaur roaring]

NARRATOR: And in 2003, tiny traces of collagen

were discovered inside a fossilized T-rex femur.

Collagen is a protein that forms

the connective tissues in skin, cartilage, and bone marrow.

When scientists examined the Tyrannosaurus collagen,

it was similar to collagen found in modern chickens

and ostriches.

When you look at a chicken,

you're technically looking at an incredibly

highly evolved dinosaur.

[dinosaur growling]

Paleontologist Jack Horner believes that by unlocking

atavistic traits in bird genes,

it might be possible to reverse engineer

prehistoric monsters.

[dinosaur roaring]

Chicken embryos with snouts instead of beaks

and some raptor-like legs.

NARRATOR: This egg could be evidence of prehistoric

genes becoming reactivated in modern chickens.

And Karen Bellinger discovers fast-growing Shenyang City

could offer the perfect conditions

to cause such biological throwbacks to occur

outside of a lab.

Shenyang City, where this egg is from,

is incredibly polluted, to the point that walking around

breathing the air all day is

like smoking three packs of cigarettes.

NARRATOR: Shenyang has recorded air pollution levels

50 times higher

than those considered safe by the World Health Organization.

The city's air quality has been

linked to mutations in developing fetuses.

Could it be that we're now seeing a regression of

the chicken's genes to something that's more

similar to what a T-rex might have looked like?

NARRATOR: If this is the case, we may have to prepare

for a future in which chicken-saurs walk the Earth.

Suddenly, taking your kids to an innocent petting zoo could

end up being more like taking them to Jurassic Park.

NARRATOR: But biologist Carin Bondar

thinks it's unlikely that pollution alone

could trigger enough atavistic mutations to

cause a chicken to revert into a full-blown dinosaur.

BONDAR: I'm not convinced that something like

that is actually possible in nature.

So there must be something else going on.

NARRATOR: Coming up, did a mash-up of

modern creatures make a monster?

Could the father of this chicken egg

actually be some kind of snake?

NARRATOR: And the incredible floating truck.

WOLSHON: One minute, you're sitting, having a coffee

and the next minute, you're looking at a truck

that is now sitting on your roof.

NARRATOR: A farmer in China films

a scaly limb emerging from a chicken egg.

Biologist Leslie Samuel believes the protrusion looks

reptilian, and he suspects

that something disturbing has occurred to

produce this extraordinary egg.

Could the father of this chicken egg

actually be some kind of snake?

NARRATOR: In the Middle Ages,

it was commonly believed that

snakes and chickens could produce offspring.

These eggs were laid by hens but hatched as serpents.

NARRATOR: It sounds like a medieval legend,

but on September 17th, 1881,

the National Tribune newspaper runs a story about

an incredible incident in Marlton, New Jersey.

A young boy found a juvenile snake

and paired it up with his newly hatched chicken.

He raised them together in the same cage,

and so the two animals became friends.

NARRATOR: Then events take an even stranger turn.

It looks like a chicken and a snake

had some kind of weird Romeo and Juliet romance.

BONDAR: Then the chicken laid some eggs,

but one of them was different than all of the others.

NARRATOR: When the eggs hatch, one of the newborns appears

to be something straight out of a medieval horror story.

One of them actually ended up hatching into some kind of

disgusting hybrid creature with a chicken's body

and a snake's head, complete with a forked tongue

that would come out and sample the air.

NARRATOR: It's reported that the creature's hideous

appearance is matched only by its hostility.

This demonic hybrid turned out to be incredibly

aggressive and killed the other eight in the brood.

NARRATOR: People from across the county come to

see this freak of nature for themselves.

BONDAR: There were several newspaper stories written about

the incident -- it became somewhat

of a neighborhood sensation.

If these accounts are to be believed,

who knows what's gonna hatch out of this egg.

NARRATOR: There are over 200 species of snake in China,

including the deadly Chinese cobra.

A Taiwanese study found its bite kills over

15 percent of humans who get infected with its venom.

A chake or a snicken on the loose

could be very bad news for citizens of Shenyang.

This farm potentially just became a much scarier place.

NARRATOR: After the video was released,

the egg mysteriously disappears.

Scientists think it's unlikely that a snake

and a chicken could produce live offspring,

but until another explanation comes along,

locals fear of venomous rooster could be

a cock-a-doodle danger to the people of Shenyang.

I'll never look at a chicken the same way again.

Now, Alban in Ontario, Canada.

September 9th, 2019.

Dennis Lefebvre dash cam records

a truck traveling ahead of him.

This video starts out just driving along

a nice, open road around 5 PM.

Nothing looks out of the ordinary.

Then something really strange happens.

NARRATOR: The truck veers off the road.

[tires screeching]

[crashing noises]

Its back end launches into the air,

coming down on the roof of a two story house.

Ooh...what?

-I can't believe this! -What just happened there?

NARRATOR: Lefebvre stops to check if

the truck driver and the house's occupants are okay.

WOLSHON: One minute, you're sitting, having a coffee,

and the next minute, you're looking at

a truck that is now sitting on your roof.

NARRATOR: The driver emerges from his cab,

dazed but seemingly unhurt.

The homeowners are uninjured but find themselves confronted

with a mystery --

how did a truck get on top of their house?

40-ton truck doesn't just flip over like that.

The energy required to achieve this is immense.

It's almost as if a giant, invisible hand has lifted

that truck out and placed it gently on that house.

I'd expect to see something like that in a video game,

but not in real life.

NARRATOR: There were no high winds

on the day of the incident,

but an eyewitness report says that as the truck starts to

levitate, a loud noise can be heard.

Physicist Saad Sarwana

investigates if it could be connected.

Could that loud bang be responsible for levitating

this truck off the ground?

Sound has a powerful presence.

Loud music can rattle windows.

An opera singer can shatter glass.

Ultrasound waves can pulverize kidney stones.

If you can create sound waves which are more powerful than

the gravity pushing an object down,

you can create acoustic levitation.

NARRATOR: Acoustic Levitation is achieved when

an intense sound, normally greater than 150 DB,

the same intensity as a jet engine at takeoff, is

aligned into a reflective frequency

called a standing wave that can

suspend an object in the air.

Could a phenomena like acoustic levitation

lift this truck in the air?

NARRATOR: Coming up, can the power of sound

toss a truck like a toy?

The humble truck could very easily

be turned into a super killer.

NARRATOR: And after the tragic death of a young girl...

...a heavenly miracle follows a hellish blaze.

You see everything burned,

and this one shrine that is untouched.

NARRATOR: A driver in Canada records a truck lifting

into the air and landing on a house.

The eyewitness reports hearing a mysterious

loud noise as the truck jolts upwards.

Could the power of sound alone have levitated the truck?

All right.

NARRATOR: Engineer Nick Householder wants

to put the theory to the test.

So what I have here is

a set of ultrasonic speakers.

Each one of them is designed to put out a sound wave

so high-pitched that we can't hear it.

If I'm able to produce

a standing sound waves between these two speakers,

there is effectively a frozen sound wave.

The pockets of high and low pressure should be able

to support an object like a surfer on the ocean.

I'm using the oscilloscope to

make sure that the two waves line up.

So now, the yellow wave is as strong as I can get it,

and its peak lines up at the center of the square wave.

What I have here is a small piece of Mylar --

it's thin, it's lightweight, and it also reflects

sound waves.

So it should be able to slot into the low pressure

zones that this standing wave has created

between the two speakers -- let's see.

What? Yes!

That's acoustic levitation.

This proves that it's possible to

levitate an object with sound waves.

NARRATOR: But there's a problem.

The Mylar weighs just a fraction of an ounce.

The truck in the footage weighs about 40 tons.

For something the size of a truck,

you would need a huge sound source,

as well as an immense amount of power.

We're talking about speakers the size of

a football stadium and the energy of a small town.

I don't see anything like that on the road.

NARRATOR: When engineer Rachel de Barros

studies the footage,

She notices the truck swerving off the road just before

the moment of impact.

Perhaps that could be the start of a death

wobble incident.

Jeeps and trucks have a solid axle, and that makes them prone

to vibration and shaking along

the suspension and steering, and it can get so bad, it can

lead to what's called death wobble.

MORGAN: The way that it happens is if you're driving

down the road, and you hit a bump,

it doesn't even have to be a big one,

the bump will resonate through the front axle, and it will feed

into itself and make itself worse.

NARRATOR: A death wobble can occur

at just 50 miles per hour. -DE BARROS: Before you know it,

your steering wheel is whipping back and forth,

which leaves you white knuckling it.

NARRATOR: When the death wobble strikes,

it can kickstart a terrifying chain of events.

If that's what's happening here,

the swerving wheel has set the truck on a course

for disaster.

You can see the front of the truck going right into

the ditch, and this may have acted somewhat like a ramp.

NARRATOR: The truck slams into a utility pole,

snapping the pole in half and bringing the truck

to a dead stop.

The truck has all this forward moving inertia,

and that inertia has got to go somewhere.

NARRATOR: The redirected energy lifts the back of the truck off

the road, but De Barros doesn't believe that this inertia would

be enough to lift it 15 feet in the air.

This on its own is very unlikely

to cause the entire back to flip up.

NARRATOR: The final piece of the puzzle is

a second jolt visible just after the moment of impact.

BRENSENBERGER: If there's something inside of

the back part of the truck, it may have shifted from

the sudden stop, and that could have pushed

the truck in an upward motion.

NARRATOR: At the moment of impact,

an unsecured cargo sliding down to the front could push

the truck up into the air like it was flipped by a superhero.

This load shift can be deadly -- when whatever's inside

the trailer can move independently,

it can slide around, and when the brakes are applied,

can shift forward even into the cab, killing the driver.

BRENSENBERGER: An unsecured load can throw off the truck's

center of gravity,

and this can result in a rollover or jack knifing.

NARRATOR: The footage that looks like an astonishing act

of levitation is actually a glimpse of

a hidden killer riding the highways.

It is estimated that 800,000 trucks carrying dangerous

cargoes are hauled across

American roads every single day.

Some of them carrying explosive fuels and toxic chemicals.

Which means that the humble truck could very

easily be turned into a super killer.

NARRATOR: This time, everyone walked away.

I think what we've learned is that

danger can strike in the most unexpected places.

Now, Armstrong in Santa Fe, Argentina.

August 3rd, 2020.

A firefighter films the aftermath of

a wildfire that swept through an area of farmland.

He's walking through this black, decimated,

ravaged landscape.

The ashes stretched to the horizon, as far as the eye

can see in all directions.

Fire doesn't discriminate -- it burns everything...

or does it?

NARRATOR: A gleaming white shrine with a cross on it

stands on a small, unburned patch of land.

Like the whole area is charred, except for

this one shining, bright white shrine that just stands out.

Even in a fire, you would expect that, if it

wasn't burned, this shrine would at least

be covered in ash, covered in soot.

But it's nothing, it's totally perfect.

SZULGIT: There's something weird going on here.

Like, there's some invisible force protecting this.

NARRATOR: Coming up, has this shrine been saved by divine

intervention or by the mob?

GOTTLIEB: Looks like a miracle...

but there could be something a little more sinister going on.

NARRATOR: And a security camera captures

strange beings stalking a suburban driveway.

ORZEL: Little creatures waddling around beams of light.

It's hard not to make the jump to thinking they're aliens.

NARRATOR: A firefighter in Argentina

films an incredible sight.

A wildfire tears through a field, leaving

a gleaming white shrine mysteriously untouched by

the flames.

NARRATOR: Religious objects and even people

have been reported to miraculously survive

heat and flames before.

St. John the Apostle, the last of Jesus's

close allies, was said to have been plunged

into hot, boiling oil but to have emerged unscathed.

His follower, St. Polycarp, was tied to the stake

and set aflame, but allegedly, the flames refused to actually

touch his body.

NARRATOR: Even today, religious objects appear to

have been spared destruction in inexplicable ways.

BELLINGER: After 9-11, firefighters found

a Bible fused to a piece of

molten metal in an area where everything else around it

was completely obliterated.

The Bible was open to Matthew, chapter five,

the Sermon on the Mount.

To believers, this would be

sure proof of God's power -- to destroy,

when he so chooses, but also to preserve.

NARRATOR: Investigation of the tragic story

behind the shrine deepens the mystery.

This is a shrine to a 13-year-old girl,

put up after her tragic death in an auto accident.

It's nowhere near the road where she died.

So you have to ask yourself, why is it there?

Looks like a miracle, but there could

be something a little more sinister going on.

NARRATOR: Historian Craig Gottlieb suspects that something

insidious might be buried beneath the field.

There's got to be something underground that's preventing

the fire from spreading into this particular spot.

NARRATOR: Many hazardous chemicals have

fire-retardant properties.

Could it be that there's toxic waste under

the shrine, and that's what's causing the fire not to burn?

NARRATOR: Argentina is a nation that could

become the world's hazardous waste dump.

Armstrong, where the shrine is, is just up from

Buenos Aires, and Buenos Aires

has a huge problem with waste,

and this waste isn't just homegrown.

President Mauricio Macri signed a decree allowing

the import of toxic waste into the country in 2019.

NARRATOR: Around the world, mobsters get their

hands dirty making money from trash.

In Italy, the Mafia was earning $16 billion dollars

a year collecting garbage from cities

and then illegally dumping it all over the countryside.

A recent Interpol report indicates that Buenos Aires

has become a key stomping ground

of organized crime in Argentina.

Could the shrine be on top of an illegal

trash dumping site that's poisoning the environment

from miles everywhere?

I don't know what is more sad -- that this

could be evidence of an illegal landfill

or deceased a girl's shrine sits on top of it.

NARRATOR: The farmer and the man who put up the shrine might

have unwittingly been used by illegal garbage dumpers to

cover their tracks.

But investigations of the field have yet to reveal

any proof of flame-retardant chemicals in the soil,

and many locals see the survival of

the shrine as evidence of divine intervention.

A miracle, a toxic landfill --

perhaps we'll never know for sure.

NARRATOR: Now, Dallas, Texas.

August 28th, 2020, 5:31 a.m.

A security camera covers a suburban driveway.

BONDAR: It seems like a calm, normal night in this Texas

suburb...until suddenly, these two

very strange creatures appear.

SANFORD: They are really bizarre.

They appear to be about two feet tall,

crouched over like demonic gremlins.

NARRATOR: The intruders stalk the driveway

with an unknown purpose.

The more I watch this, the creepier it gets.

What are these highly unusual creatures?

And where did they come from?

NARRATOR: And then, one of them shoots something.

Whoa!

I did not expect it to do that.

That's crazy.

What is that strange light being shot into the sky?

Looks almost like a missile firing out.

Could that be some kind of a laser gun

or communication device?

Little creatures waddling around beams of light.

It's hard not to make the jump to thinking they're aliens.

NARRATOR: Biologist Carin Bondar believes that these nighttime

intruders could have come from the skies.

The way these creatures are moving, coupled the stocky shape

and the size remind me of a very particular

nocturnal bird -- the owl.

[owl calls]

NARRATOR: Texas has at least 11 species of owl,

and these birds are built for killing.

If these owls are stalking this house,

the owners better make sure that they've got their pets

inside -- owls are well known to

attack anything that will make a good meal.

In 2009, Sadie the Pomeranian was snatched

by a hungry owl in Davenport, Iowa.

Owls are very territorial and have been known to attack

humans, unprovoked, just for being in their territory.

Owls attack their prey with such force,

it's akin to a human being struck by an 18 wheeler.

NARRATOR: In 2014, the citizens of Purmerend in the Netherlands

are subjected to a year-long reign of terror

by a European eagle owl.

MAN: He flew towards us,

and he attacked my client, and he got my client

here at the back and he wounded her

with the -- at the cheek.

NARRATOR: Over a 12-month period,

this owl is responsible for more than 50 attacks

that leave many of its victims bloodied and bruised.

When we go out at night or when it's dark,

we go out only with umbrellas with us.

It doesn't detect them.

This looks like a scene out of a horror film.

Having owls get up close and personal with your property

could spell bad news.

NARRATOR: But normal owls don't fire a light beam

like the creature in the footage.

The streak of light that shoots up --

what could that possibly be?

NARRATOR: Coming up, could these nighttime

intruders be armed with deadly weapons?

The liquid that they are able to

project is as effective as tear gas.

NARRATOR: A security camera in suburban Dallas

captures mysterious beings prowling a property.

Then, one of the creatures fires

a glowing projectile into the night.

Physicist Chad Orzel takes a closer look at the footage.

So on the first viewing, it certainly looks like these

creatures are shooting some kind of laser into the sky.

Lasers are different than ordinary light sources

in that the light waves are coherent, and this

allows them to be focused into a very tight beam that stays

together all in the same direction.

Lasers are a great way of

sending communication signals over very long distances,

and NASA has experimented with

using them for space communication,

but is that what we're seeing in this video?

NARRATOR: Orzel freezes the video and notices

that the beam shot by the creatures

doesn't stay together as a laser would,

but it separates.

He wonders if the type of security

camera used could explain the bright beam.

This monochrome recording looks like something from

a night vision camera, which records in the infrared --

that's a wavelength that's not visible to our eyes.

When using infrared light,

things are not always as they seem.

Highly reflective materials can become much brighter,

and what looks like a laser beam could just be some more

ordinary object that reflects very well in the infrared.

I think what we're seeing here could

be the spray from some sort of liquid.

NARRATOR: Orzel believes the projectile is a spray of

liquid glowing in the infrared night vision of the camera.

He comes up with an experiment to test his theory.

I have here a small syringe full of water

that I will take and squirt

across the field of view of the camera when it's in

its night vision mode.

And let's see what that water looks like when

it's lit up by the infrared light on the camera.

So now I'm gonna switch the lights off

so the camera will go into its night mode,

and in night vision mode, we'll squirt liquid

across the field of view.

[squirting noise]

And then let's see what that looks like.

[squirting noise]

[squirting noise]

Yeah, there it is.

It's very quick in real time.

But if we slow it down,

we see the stream of water looks very bright in the light

from the camera.

So what we're seeing in the video is probably

a stream of liquid being jetted out by these creatures.

Biologist Jayde Lovell believes one notorious local

resident might fit the profile of Orzel's theory.

What animals do we know that live in Texas and are known to

shoot liquid at high velocity?

And the obvious answer is it could be a skunk.

NARRATOR: A skunk's liquid spray is one of

the most powerful chemical weapons found in any mammal.

Skunks are very effective at deterring predators.

The liquid that they are able to

project is as effective as tear gas.

NARRATOR: A skunk emits its spray from scent glands located

inside its rectum, and it can fire jets

of this noxious liquid over a distance of up to 10 feet.

The vile excretion contains thiols, the same sulfur-based

compounds that give onions

their eye-watering effect.

But the thiols in skunk spray are much more potent.

They stink like rotting carcasses, and the spray can

cause temporary blindness,

coughing, and vomiting.

NARRATOR: The stench is so powerful that it

can be detected from over a mile away.

SANFORD: Skunks target the nose and the mouth.

At high enough doses,

it can even be lethal to humans.

NARRATOR: The thiols in skunk spray are highly toxic.

Scientists have reported that they have an aesthetic

properties that in high

concentrations can cause unconsciousness,

lower pulse rate, and eventually, death.

Knowing how effective skunk spray is,

you definitely don't want to be wandering

around outside in Texas with these boys around.

NARRATOR: As powerful as skunk spray is,

it's also a weapon of last resort.

It can take a skunk up to 10 days to

replenish the foul musk after it has emptied its glands.

So a pair of skunks alone on a quiet

suburban Dallas street wouldn't be spraying without

good reason.

These animals are displaying behaviors

that make me think they feel threatened.

The fact that I can't see in the camera

whatever is making them so nervous, makes me nervous.

NARRATOR: What else might be lurking

just beyond the view of the lens?

There are strange things that come out at night.

So be careful when you're out there on the streets.